NIRVANA "SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT"

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Next in the continually varied series of high quality 12" reissues compiled by Slow to Speak's Paul Nickerson & Francis Englehardt comes a quintessential release of the prolific and incendiary Nirvana. Both at the time of their popular blooming and their continuing nostalgic re-popularization up to this day, the appeal of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic & Dave Grohl generated a universal fascination and reverence---across every age bracket, generational gap & genre-specific subjective inclination---that rocketed the band to a mass-cultural adoration & emblematic importance beyond any of their wildest imaginings could have ever anticipated or foreseen. And certainly, their legacy has grown over the years with pressing & urgent vivacity, seemingly unscathed by the passing trends of popularity's fickle inclination, still drawing enough fascination & obsession with the cult of Cobain's troubled personality to have produced 2 films specifically dedicated to the dissection of his notorious neuroses & troubled self-destructiveness. Yet, far beyond the obsessive gaze on Cobain's wild personality & non-comforming defiance, the real strength of Nirvana's story, of their aggressive, militant Punk-Rock inspired anti-authoritarianism, their selfless hedonism and Cobain & company's poetic & disarmingly witty analysis of modern day boredom & indifference lies in the formation's miraculous victory over the major labels, over MTV trivialization, Spin & Rolling Stone's oversimplification & misrepresentation: over every popular misconception and attempted undermining that would have painted the group as just another infantile act of teenage revolt. The underlying integrity of Nirvana's aesthetic & theoretical expression simply cannot be laughed at and then forgotten along with the continuing barrage of mediocre and unsubstantial bands of their era or ours, and despite the years since, the band's impact in such a short time has stayed with us to this day, their defiant anti-musicianship and sternly do-it-yourself aesthetic & propagation while riding the financial rainbow of mass stardom reminds us that there is the possibility for a musician or band or producer or whomever it may be to "cross over," to win the popular mandate of culture and still retain their artistic integrity. And while it must be said that the romance around Cobain's eventual suicide has created a general nassau among any of those who truly appreciated Cobain & Nirvana's contribution---from their dismantling of the rigid constraints of major-label acceptability to pushing the limits of the popularly acceptable in music to the limits of absurdity, perversity and subversiveness---the lasting integrity of Nirvana's project overpowers any attempts at recuperation...at least we must hope.